Marie Ferrarella - Her Special Charm

They were barely an inch apart from one another, so close that their breaths mixed and became one.

All sorts of things were going on inside of James. Things he couldn’t understand or unravel. Things he felt it best not to examine.

“Not hardly,” he murmured, more to himself than to her.

Constance’s heart jumped up into her throat and made itself a home there just beneath the oval of the cameo.

And then everything stopped.

For all she knew, the world had abruptly stopped turning on its axis. Because she felt the room tilting.

James placed the crook of his finger beneath her chin and raised her head a fraction. Placing her lips just within reach.

Their eyes met and held. Seconds were knitting themselves into eternity.

She wasn’t sure who cut the tiny distance between them to nothing….

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To everyone who’s ever believed,

against all odds, in the power of love.

This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author has written over 140 books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide.

October 8, 1861

My dearest love,

I hope this letter finds you and that you are well and whole. That is the worst of this awful war, the not knowing where you are and if you are. I tell myself that in my heart, I would know if you are no longer among the living. That if you were taken from me in body as well as in spirit, some piece of my heart would surely wither and die because it only beats for you.

Each evening I press a kiss to my fingers and touch the cameo you gave me—the very same one I shall not remove until you are standing right here beside me—and pray that in the morning I will rise and look out my window to see you coming over the ridge. It is what sustains me in these dark hours.

I miss you and love you more each day.

Your Amanda

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

July 1, 1865

Amanda Deveaux paused to wipe her forehead with the back of her hand. The sun was merciless today. As merciless as the war that had engulfed them all these long years, turning all their lives into ashes.

She paused and looked to the north. To the road that led onto her property. She hoped to see some sign of Will. Like every day since he had left her to fight and be brave, there was no sign of his approach.

Amanda sighed. Each day her hope grew a little thinner, her despair a little heavier.

Squaring her shoulders, she wrapped her fingers around the hoe she’d been using to coax life from the garden that sustained them.

The War between the States had come to an end three months ago, but not her ordeal. That continued to stretch out endlessly before her, each day no different than the one before. No different than the one after.

Everything had changed since Lt. William Slattery had ridden away, leaving her behind to wait. To pray. To each day slip a little further into her own personal living hell. The war had taken her brother Jonathan. He was one of the many who had fallen at Chancellorsville. And it had taken her father as well. Not on the battlefield, but here, where each day she watched him grow more distant, more lost. Eventually, Alexander Deveaux had faded away from life because his oldest born was no longer in it.

A year ago, her younger sister, Susannah, had married Frasier O’Brien. Frasier had come home early from the war, nursing a wound, and had just forgotten to return. He’d taken over his father’s emporium, sustaining the town at a large profit to himself. Savannah had become his wife and avarice his mistress, which suited her mother just fine. Belinda Deveaux admired a man who worshipped money. Which was why her mother had never liked Will. His family’s wealth had never met her standards.

And now, no one but Frasier had money.

She knew her mother had been secretly glad when Will’s name had appeared on that awful list of men who were missing. That had been almost two years ago. Right after Gettysburg had broken their backs and their spirit.

Many had left the area, but even after her father had died, Amanda continued working the plantation with the few emancipated souls who had chosen to stay in the only home they had ever known. She couldn’t pay them. They remained anyway, saying that when there was money to be had, they would collect.

And all the while, she watched the road, praying for some sign of the man she had never stopped loving. The man whose cameo she wore around her neck, the one she had promised never to remove until he returned to claim her for his bride.

The ivory image of Penelope against the Wedgwood-blue background had been worn down from her constant fingering. She touched it whenever she thought of Will. And whenever she prayed for his safe return.

She touched it a great deal.

In town, they called her “the widow woman who had never been a wife” behind her back. They said she was a little crazy, waiting for a dead man to come back to her.

She didn’t care what people said. All she cared about was getting from one end of the day to the other, holding on until Will returned to her. Because he had given his word that he would and he had never broken a promise to her.

Amanda got back to work. There were mouths to feed and people depending on her.

Present Day.

James Munro liked to come out early in the morning, when the city that never slept dozed a little. At five-thirty in the morning, New York City was a little less. A little less noisy, a little less traffic and, the elements willing, a little less sweltering. So far, July had been merciless.

So he and his dog Stanley went out to jog earlier and earlier, trying to find some kind of happy medium between exercising and melting in the heat of the morning. It was the only time of day when he could make his mind a blank. To focus on nothing. To keep away the demons that populated his world.

The air was particularly hard to draw into his lungs this morning. Just a little farther, he promised himself as he sprinted from one curb to the next, and then he and Stanley could turn around and go home.

He’d turn at the newsstand on the next corner. The way he always did. Raul, the man who operated the tiny stand, was usually just opening up as he’d make his turn. They had a nodding acquaintance. More than once, Raul looked as if he wanted to say something. But the ex-vet, as the sign over the newsstand proudly proclaimed, could save it for one of his customers, James thought. He wasn’t out here to talk to anyone. Except maybe Stanley.

He didn’t see the woman until he’d almost tripped over her.

Which was highly unusual, given that, as a robbery-and-burglary detective, James was pretty much aware of all his surroundings, even when he was tuning things out. But one minute, there was no one in front of him, and the next, he had to come to a skidding halt to avoid colliding with the short, rounded woman in the soft-blue sundress.

Reflexes honed to a sharp point, James just narrowly avoided running straight into her. Stanley, his five-year-old German shepherd, looked disgruntled as he shifted from side to side, wanting to continue.